White House Alum Julie M. Wenah joins Facebook as the Assoc. General Counsel for Civil Rights

Julie M. Wenah is a Nigerian-American lawyer, executive, film maker, and board member from Houston, TX . She’s a global civil rights, privacy, and product inclusion lawyer who has successfully led teams and launched products, policies, and legislation focusing on equitable and scalable solutions for domestic and international markets.

Wenah recently joined the Facebook team where she serves as Associate General Counsel for Civil Rights. In Wenah’s previous role at Airbnb, she led efforts to increase transparency into how the company handled discrimination allegations. In Wenah’s new role at Facebook, she focuses on the product development process that they’re building for billions of people around the world. Her area of responsibility includes examining how Facebook applies the civil rights lens when thinking about protective classes, from race, to gender identity, to color, to religion, to ability, and supporting efforts in building products with an inclusive lens in their product development process. When asked about her current role, Wenah stated, “I’m laser focused on our products and how our product teams work, what their goals are, and what their roadmaps are, so that our civil rights team can support them as part of their development process.”

Munson Steed, CEO at Rolling Out had a chance to sit down with Wenah to discuss her new role at Facebook, the huge responsibility that weighs on her as a young African American ‘Sister with Superpowers’, and much more during their “Seat at The Table” conversation. See below for an excerpt of that discussion.